


Guns For Hands

by cousinrayray



Series: Rick'n'Morty Songfic Train [5]
Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: Alcoholism, Angst, Humor, Incest, Jerry feels, M/M, Oh and some weed, There's a pretty happy ending I promise, family dysfunction, possible suicide attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-10
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-06-08 11:04:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15241992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cousinrayray/pseuds/cousinrayray
Summary: Jerry was a man who was very aware of his own limitations and tried to work within them. He maintained that in an more normal family, he probably could have gotten away with it.Inspired by the Twenty One Pilots song.





	Guns For Hands

**Author's Note:**

> So, I have a hundred things I'm supposed to be doing but this just insisted on being written. Jerry POV this time (first time ever hooray!)
> 
> He's such a sad, funny little man. And this song just seemed perfect for him. 
> 
> Enjoy, guys.

Jerry never used to have trouble sleeping.

It wasn't _falling_ asleep that was the problem. Well, ok, besides the usual occasions when plaguing thoughts and anxieties left him struggling to drift off. But the key word there was “usual”. This whole “waking up at an ungodly hour of the morning” thing was new. It wasn't bad or consistent enough to completely derail him, yet. No, this new problem was just enough to itch and irritate him, make him just a little more miserable and drained. Just like every other problem in his life. 

Jerry shuffled into the dark kitchen telling himself that tranquil thoughts and a glass of warm milk would serve him better than the bitter ruminations and glass of scotch that sounded sulkily appealing. The sight of a figure sprawled out on the floor sent his heart rocketing into his throat and he fumbled for the lights, dashing forward in a panic when they revealed his fourteen-year-old son unmoving, on his side and laying next to a puddle of vomit. 

“Morty!”

Jerry bent down and shook his son’s shoulders, terror almost blinding him to the sight of Morty’s eyes immediately fluttering open.

“Oh- oh my god! S-stop! Stop, Jesus, m-my head, fuck!”

Morty’s voice was slurred and whimpering. Jerry stopped shaking him and started yelling,

“What the _hell, Morty!_ What- what is this? What are you on?” He didn't dare take a whiff, didn't really need to anyway, and watched with rising anger as his son uncoordinatedly brought himself into a semi-upright position. “Are you _drunk_?”

“Jesus Christ, stop. Y-yes, I'm drunk, okay, not, like, on anything else. I- s-sorry I made a mess on the floor, I’ll-I'll clean it up and go to bed, alright?” Morty said this all with weary resignation, rubbing his eyes like the world was being deliberately and unfairly difficult. 

“No, it's not alright!” Morty’s groan incensed him further. “Of course it's not alright! You are _fourteen! Drinking!”_

“It's not that big a deal, Dad. Kids get drunk. It's a- it's a normal part of growing up.”

“Drinking at age fourteen, let alone until you pass out in your own vomit is _not_ normal! You could have _died!_ ” Jerry’s teeth were clenched. This was not at all how this sort of thing was supposed to go, he was sure of it. 

Morty snorted. He _snorted_. Then he stood unsteadily and shuffled over to where the dish towels hung, grabbing one and wetting it at the sink. He said over his shoulder, 

“I wasn't going to die. I knew I was going down and put myself in the- in the recovery position b-before I passed out.”

“Recovery position…” Jerry echoed faintly. The anger bled out of him and suddenly he felt tired. Wait, tired? In his animal relief at the sensation he was tempted to just leave Morty alone to clean up his mess and take himself to bed. 

But he was a good dad (he _was_ , dammit), so he stayed, extracted a promise from Morty that this would never happen again that even he wasn't dumb enough to believe, and grabbed a bucket.

As they were gingerly (and in Morty's case quite sloppily, he might add) cleaning up the mess Morty paused. 

“Don't, um…”

Jerry stopped wringing out the mop at the sound of the hesitant words.

“D-don't tell Rick about this, please?” Morty tilted his head down and looked up at Jerry, a near replica of nine-year-old Morty begging for a toy, if it weren't for the pale face and puffy eyes. 

Jerry felt anger light in him again. _Rick_. Of course. He should have guessed before. The man was a demon, a selfish black hole hovering at the edge of Jerry's family, pulling them to destruction one by one. He would really tear into him for this one, he'd tear him a new asshole, getting his son drunk like this and worse, just _leaving_ him?

“Dad, _please?”_

Morty’s anxious voice cut into his thoughts. Jerry looked at him. The first sign of upset his son showed over this whole awful scenario was spent on that mean, old, asshole, son of a bitch. The thought threw a stinking vomit-drenched towel on the fire of his outrage, left him feeling more than tired and defeated enough to say, “Sure, Morty, I- I try not to talk to that asshole, anyway,” with a fake laugh that Morty echoed with an equally brittle smile. 

After they were done Jerry shepherded his son to his bedroom and awkwardly attempted to tuck him in, only to be rebuffed. He mumbled goodnight and closed the door on his way out, taking the mumbled “you too” he heard as it closed as a minor victory, because this had all been very stressful and he deserved a victory somewhere in it. 

He realized with a sinking feeling of dismay that once again, he was no longer tired. 

 

That proved to be the case more and more often. 

He ran into family members on a semi-regular basis during his early hour roamings around the house. Most often it was Beth, passed out drunk on wine or close enough to it that it made little difference- she just replied in short, zombie-esque statements to any conversation leveled at her. Jerry would take her back to bed, or, later on, just move her into a better position (“recovery position,” he could hear Morty explaining) and more-or-less clean up whatever mess she had made. He ignored the voice that told him how this was happening more and more often. 

Sometimes it was Summer he ran into, doggedly tapping away on her phone on the living room couch in the dark, and they'd have a stilted conversation that petered out until Jerry wandered off with a wane admonition for her to go to bed that she summarily ignored. One night he went outside to discover her sitting on the front step, smoking a cigarette and crying, and he got the shameful pleasure of telling her off for smoking and putting a comforting hand on her shoulder. She didn't put out the cigarette, but she did accept the shoulder, for a little while, at least. Jerry counted it as a mostly-win. 

He saw surprisingly (suspiciously) little of Rick or Morty. Those two were always gone, off on some insanely dangerous, inappropriate outing that no one balked at but Jerry. It wasn't like Jerry _wanted_ to find Morty passed out on the floor again, exactly, but he felt like in the past year he had come to barely know his son. He missed his funny, shy boy that reminded him so much of himself. He wanted to know where he was, what he was up to. It would be nice to run into him on occasion, maybe have a good late night chat. 

To punish him for his selfish stupid thoughts, the universe granted Jerry his wish a few weeks after Morty’s fifteenth birthday. 

He went outside in a half-hearted attempt to stargaze and perhaps calm his mind enough to maybe, pleaseGodmaybe go back to sleep, and found a shadowy figure standing over a large hole, wielding a shovel and busily refilling it with dirt. In the middle of his backyard. At 3 am in the morning. 

The garbled shriek that left his mouth was entirely justified. 

The figure turned its head to look at him and revealed itself as his son and Jerry’s breath restarted with a woosh. His absolute terror quieted down to a queasy unease. 

“M-Morty?” 

He squeaked, then cleared his throat.

“What, uh, what you doing there, kiddo?”

He flinched at his own inanness but seriously, Jesus H. Christ his kid was burying some… thing (“ _someone”_ his mind whispered insidiously) in the backyard in the middle of the night. The parenting books didn't come close to touching this one. 

Morty didn't respond, he just turned back after that brief pause and kept shoveling, movements stiff. The unease ratcheted up inside Jerry’s chest as the silence stretched, broken only by the soft thumps of dirt hitting… whatever was in the hole. 

He watched in transfixed horror for far longer than he should have, then shook his head and tried again, striding closer to his son (still not close enough to see, _definitely_ did not want to see). 

“Morty, stop. W-what are you doing?”

He tried to inject some semblance of authority in his tone, but it just came out alarmed and a little tremulous. 

Morty stopped moving, straightened up, and turned to fully look at him. For a while that was all he did, just stared at Jerry all flat and blank and awful (“like a doll’s eyes” he heard a thick fisherman’s brogue say from a cheesy movie he both loved and feared) and Jerry felt the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck rise and realized he was afraid. He was terrified of his fifteen-year-old son, not just _for_ him. 

He was so stunned he almost missed the quiet “Go back to bed, Jerry,” except of course he didn't miss it because it sounded absolutely deadly, his son actually sounded threatening and he looked it too, somehow radiating intent while just standing there. Standing there with a shovel, dirty, and stony-faced and- and bloody? _Nodontlook._

“I-if you're sure you're ok…”

His voice sounded feeble and afraid, yearning to get away. He hated himself. He wanted to run.

Morty’s mouth twitched at the corner. Jerry tried to breathe. 

“I'm sure.”

Jerry nodded jerkily, turned, and began to walk away, not allowing himself the quicker pace his lizard brain was clamouring for. 

“Jerry.”

He flinched, cursed himself, stopped walking. 

“Yeah?”

“Don't tell Rick.”

For a few seconds his mind reeled, old anger and hurt and suspicion flaring up and also what the hell, surely the old man would know, what the hell was going on here- he cut himself off as survival instinct retook him. 

“S-sure thing, Morty.”

It was quiet and inoffensive. The voice of something weak and cornered. He didn't dare turn to look at Morty as he said it, though something inside told him it would be better if he did. Instead he said it to the grass in front of him and then scurried back into the house. 

 

After then, Jerry gradually saw more and more of Morty during his late nights. Quiet, staring, sitting or laying or looming in the dark, sometimes with a bottle in hand. Never passed out. 

Jerry avoided him like the plague. 

He had tried in the beginning, he honest-to-God had. He had tried to push aside his nascent terror towards his son and engage the clearly morose boy, draw him into casual or serious conversation (he'd take any) and hopefully quiet the twin threads of “are you ok?” and “who the hell are you?” that ran through Jerry like twin constricting snakes every time he looked at him. But Morty gave him nothing- evasions, one-word answers, smirking outright lies, or just silence. He seemed to like the silence best. He would just stay still like a statue and let his eyes bore into Jerry until Jerry fled, telling himself it was obviously what Morty wanted so that made it more okay. 

He avoided those eyes constantly, shiny and dangerous at night, dull and wasted in the morning. He shut down the occasional fantasies that still popped up of leaving and taking Morty with him, being the hero that Morty thanked in the end right before he drove off to his Ivy League school. It wouldn't work anyway- Beth would kill him and Morty would never go. He consoled himself with the thought that at least there weren't more mounds of dirt popping up in the backyard. Not that he knew of, at least. That perhaps the worst had passed, and while the present wasn't ideal, it was at least holding. 

Again, stupid thoughts. 

He walked out to the night-shrouded backyard again (he should really just give it up, what good had the stars ever brought him? Bad omens, the twinkly bastards) and was brought up short by a scene eerily similar to the one nearly a year ago- Morty standing alone and unmoving in the dark. 

Jerry glanced around in anxious reflex but saw no burial mound or hole. What he did see was what looked like some kind of high-tech gun, wrapped in Morty's right hand. 

His brain stuttered around explanations for why his son was standing quietly alone with a gun, a dozen different excuses all violent and dangerous but plausible given what little Jerry knew of Morty's mysterious life. They were all infinity preferable to the one glaring, dramatic, horrific explanation klaxoning in the forefront of his mind, fueled by half-remembered statistics on teenage depression and fear-mongering parenting articles about final solutions to temporary problems. His son. Contemplative. Alone in the dark with a gun. 

He swallowed, then forced himself to say something. 

“Morty?”

Uninspired but good enough. It got an effect, at least. Morty sighed, thin shoulders rising and falling as he aimed a thin smile to the ground that Jerry could barely see in the dark. 

“Hi, Jerry. Sort of forgot about you.”

Jerry blinked. Oh God what?

“Um, that's okay,” he said lamely, then gave a weak laugh. “Easy to do.”

That got him a very wry-sounding snort from Morty, still looking at the ground. “That it is.”

Jerry ran his fingers through his hair in an unconscious response to the horrible awkwardness of the situation. God, he really was not a good dad, not at all. What could he possibly say? He barely knew his son, and this wasn't some ordinary teen estrangement kind of deal- he probably literally could not comprehend most of the things Morty had seen, what he was going through. It's not that he had no experience with angst or depression, it's just that it was so different an experience as to be useless, if not offensive. He and his skinny little boy were so far apart. 

He let this happen to him, Jerry thought unhappily, then reminded himself that he had tried, dammit. He had tried and no one had listened, no one had met him halfway. By now he couldn't do anything. It wasn't his fault.

“Hey, Morty?”

He had to do _something_. 

“You wanna- I think, maybe, um… you wanna go back inside? With me, uh, you know, if you want to,” he tacked on at the end, then immediately second-guessed himself. 

Morty finally looked at him. Same lopsided not-smile as earlier but at least he was meeting his eye. Jerry tried not to panic. 

“Go back inside, Jerry.”

The words made Jerry shiver with the echo of the last time they were said. The tone was different now though, less edged. Morty softened it further when he added quietly, “I'll be back in soon.”

Jerry stared at him, hesitant. 

“I promise,” Morty said with a broader smirk. 

Jerry’s eyebrows rose and he paused for a few more seconds. Then he let out a breath, turned heel and fled, God help him he fled like the cowardly sack of shit he was. 

When he came down red-eyed the next morning to his family breakfast and his son was sitting there, alive and breathing, he knew it was a gift he in no way deserved. 

 

Jerry couldn't say whether he was filled with more dread or comfort at the thought of continuing to see his sullen, possibly murderous, possibly suicidal son during those awful witching hours of wakefulness he was still forced to endure (Jesus would it never end?). It was fitting, then, that he was left unfulfilled either way. 

Morty did continue to be a lurking occasional nighttime presence for a few more months. Then he just stopped. He was nowhere to be found, not in the house or the now-dreaded backyard.

Jerry was left mostly alone aside from the regular incoherent Beth encounters (they were almost comforting now in their terrible regularity). Summer had long ceased coming around the house at all; she saw her chance to flee when she got accepted to a state school and hadn't looked back in the nearly three years since. Jerry was relieved for her, in a distant, bloodless way. She was like her mother- smart and fierce and cold. His family of knives.

But where was his broken-edged boy? Jerry still cared, not that it was worth much, but it meant _something_ , right? The idea that he had written off his son entirely was hounding him more closely tonight than it usually did as he gazed around his quiet house. 

He went upstairs and checked Morty's room. He didn't know for sure (because he never checked as often as he should, as often as fatherhood would likely demand he should), but based on past history he figured he had about a 50/50 chance of finding Morty asleep in his bed. He tentatively swung open the door. No dice. No Morty. 

Later on Jerry would wonder what in the world made him think to check Rick's room. It might have been divine intervention from the universe that hated him. It might have been the half-hearted gasp of his parental instincts, finally making themselves known. It might have been, and most likely was, pure, dumb, shitty luck. 

But at the time he wasn't thinking too much besides the constant refrain of how tired he was and the grumble of how no one was ever where or who they were supposed to be. He expected to find an empty room, or more likely, be moderately electrocuted by the doorknob as soon as he touched it, which was what had happened the last time he tried to enter Rick's room uninvited. (He had never _been_ invited, so you could just call it the last time he ever tried entering Rick's room).

But this time, the knob turned and opened the door like a normal doorknob should. Then he was standing in the doorway, blinking stupidly into Rick's messy, tiny room, dim but not so dim that he couldn't see that there were not one, but two people sleeping on Rick’s narrow camp bed. One, sprawled on his back and shirtless, head tilted and snoring loudly, was Rick. 

The other, curled on his side, face lax and using Rick's chest as a pillow, and at the very _least_ naked from the chest up (the blanket obscured the rest), was Morty. 

Jerry was not a particularly smart man. He wasn't observant, and sometimes he deliberately remained blind to things because they were too stressful to think about. Still, he did note before hissing static descended on his short-circuiting brain that his first thought, distinct and clear as a bell, was “ _Oh, that makes sense.”_

He stood there paralyzed, staring at his son asleep naked in his grandfather's arms (just hearing the descriptors in his thoughts made him feel sick and he hastily tore his gaze away and onto the safer floor) and feeling more aware of his failings as a father than he ever had before. Morty wasn't dead. But he was still gone. 

As he stared at the detritus-strewn floor two thoughts came to him. One- he needed to get the fuck out of this bedroom, because the only thing more awful than this was if one or both of them woke up with him in here. Two, and this one was hard to touch, a live coal- he couldn't let anyone else, couldn't let Beth find them like this. Not cuddled and gross and cozy, dead to the world in each other's embrace. It would be… wrong?OhgodnotwrongthatwasntwrongTHISwaswrongsomethingwaswrongwithallofthem. Stop. Not now. 

So carefully not thinking about it, he gathered up several empty beer bottles from the floor and retreated from the room. He stood the bottles upright in front of the door, so that if anyone else opened it, as it swung inwards it would knock the bottles over, hopefully making enough noise to wake them up and- ( _and give them warning_ ) and nothing. No. Not thinking about it. 

Jerry did what he did best, and left. 

 

The problem with world-ending revelations was that the world didn't actually end, afterwards.

Jerry was given the unique agony of being forced to look both his father-in-law and his son in the eye (or as close to it as he could manage) that next morning at breakfast. He must have managed well enough because they didn't seem to notice anything amiss. Not that day, or any of the days after it. 

This put Jerry in a strange limbo where it seemed suddenly he was the one holding a few very important cards. He was determined to figure out how to best use them. But somewhat unexpectedly, that proved very difficult and confusing. 

The thing was, and if there was a God may He forgive him, after two months of more critical observation than he had ever managed to sustain before, Jerry was forced to conclude that Morty seemed _better_. He wasn't exactly bright and chipper, singing show tunes all the time. But the more Jerry looked, the more hints of preteenager Morty he saw, and less of the sullen, terrifying bomb about to go off. He was quiet, but a normal-enough quiet. Sarcastic, but not alarmingly so. He laughed, he talked, he hung out on the couch after dinner sometimes. He even argued with Beth about keeping his room clean enough. He was alive, plain and simple, instead of being the walking ghost Jerry had tried so hard to forget. 

Jerry was left wondering how in the world this quiet but miraculous shift had happened without him noticing, then was forced to conclude that it would have been more surprising if he _had_ noticed. Even more uncomfortably, he supposed he knew something of the reason why it had occurred. 

There was no helping it. He had to talk to Rick. 

 

“You're pretty close to my son. Way closer than I am.” Jerry said with deliberate casualness.

It had taken surprisingly little finagling to get Rick to agree to “hang out”. Jerry just showed up outside his door midday while Morty was presumably at school, and proffered two bottles of liquor in response to the questioning scowl. A simple “drink with me?” did the rest, though Rick did sigh and roll his eyes like he was doing Jerry a huge favor. Now, sitting in the man’s room (Jerry had immediately sat on the floor in preference to the bed), an inch and a half into his fifth and already more than tipsy enough, Jerry took the plunge. 

Rick gave him an unimpressed look. “Well, that doesn't- euurp- doesn't really say much, Jerry.” 

“One could argue that you took him.” It slipped out, but at least the tone was calm enough. 

“One could.” Rick replied, far more evenly than Jerry had managed. 

The old anger rose. No, not anger. Rejection. Jealousy. Jerry had no right. He had given it up. He thought of Morty. Morty smiling, Morty eating breakfast, sleeping, watching dumb movies, _not_ burying corpses or drinking away the night or staring blankly at weapons. 

“Thank you.”

The words tumbled out before he could call them back, but once said they felt right. Rick stared at him wide-eyed, apparently shocked into momentary silence. It felt pretty good, honestly. 

“You saved him,” he added for clarification’s sake. Rick continued staring. Jerry tried not to smirk.

“Are you-” Rick paused to take a hearty swig from his bottle, then belched. Jerry grimaced. “Jerry. Are you seriously thanking me for molesting your son?”

Well that got right to the point. And got rid of the burgeoning smirk. The fucking bastard. But well….

“Well….” Jerry paused to gather his thoughts and noted that Rick was staring at him like he was a monster, which really was a bit rich, considering. “...No, I think it's safe to say I'm not ever gonna say that. But Morty was… he’s been spiraling for years. He got worse and worse and I- I just watched.”

Grief and guilt and self-pity choked Jerry momentarily, and he stewed for a few seconds before he remembered himself and what he was trying to do. He cleared his throat, not quite able to meet Rick’s eye. He wasn't a brave man, and this was already more of a test of courage than he had ever faced before without fleeing. 

“And then it stopped. Somebody helped him. _Somebody_ kept him alive. It sure as hell wasn't me or Beth,” he said with a humorless chuckle. “It must have been you.”

“Coulda been me that- that caused it in the first place.”

Jerry looked over sharply at that. For a moment all he could do was blink. Then he began to laugh, incredulous. 

“Yeah, I'm aware.” He went to rub his eyes at the fucked-upness of his life, forgetting the bottle in his hand and almost getting an eyeful of gin for his troubles. He sighed and put his hands back down. “I don't know. I mean, yeah, of course, you're a horrible asshole that’s more or less ruined my life, but...” He shrugged. 

“I sort of think it- it went deeper than that. Got any statistics on those Mortys that grow up without a Rick?” Jerry asked somewhat grimly. Rick shot him a brief unreadable glance, then his gaze skittered back to his bottle, apparently now the one unable to meet Jerry’s eye. 

“Not good, huh?” He added unnecessarily into the silence. Rick still stared at his bottle. Then in a burst of movement he swung it back and chugged twice. He grimaced. 

“You're pretty fucking sick, you know that?” he informed Jerry with a show of moderate distaste, like he was telling someone they had dog shit stuck to their shoe. 

Jerry shrugged, secretly delighted by how the insults just bounced off him now. Maybe that was the only reason he was able to do this. An apparent side benefit to finding out your father-in-law was screwing your son, he thought with insane humor, was that it made him somehow seem a lot less intimidating. But Rick was still looking at him with that contorted face that meant he didn't get what Jerry was trying to say. 

“Listen. I don't know my son. I don't know how to help him.” _Wow_ , okay, the sneer on Rick’s face as Jerry admitted that still had a little sting to it. He powered on.

“Only you know him. Only you know how to help him” he said emphatically. “And you must have, because he's _still here_. So thank you. Thank you for saving my son.”

He worked up the nerve to look at Rick full on and take in his reaction. Rick was staring at the bottle meditatively, lips pursing and unpursing. He looked up and cocked his brow at Jerry’s expectant face. 

“You really are stupid.” 

Jerry buried his head in his hands in frustration, bottle be damned. God, why was he doing this again? To be nice? Out of guilt? Gratefulness? Whatever the reason was, it clearly was a bad decision. 

“He’s not saved. And- and if anything he saved himself.” Rick said suddenly, then rolled his eyes in irritation when Jerry looked up, confused. “You- you- you're talking about him like he's some shitty project from whatever middle school science class you failed thirty years ago. Tie the loose ends and- and turn it in, get a nice fuckin’ C+ stamped on his head. Pat yourself on the back.”

He took another swig in what had to be a deliberately dramatic punctuation. 

“There's no end point, Jerry. It's not- it doesn't just stop. The only time he’ll actually be safe is when he’s dead, dumbass.”

Though he had just said Jerry’s name, Rick barely seemed to be addressing him at all, if the sudden shift in his tone was anything to go by. Jerry shifted uncomfortably. Rick really was, and forever would be, the most infuriating, arrogant dickwad Jerry had ever met. But still… The urge to speak prickled, and the words felt like they were stuck somewhere inside his stomach, like pushing them out would mean vomiting all over the floor. 

“You’re right. I- that probably explains a lot of why I'm a shitty dad.” He was amazed to find he wasn't actually bleeding out after that and waited for Rick to go for the kill. 

Rick didn't though. He didn't look smugly pleased, or angry, or anything Jerry expected. If anything, he looked sort of itchy, fidgeting and frowning like something had crawled up his ass (Jerry shuddered at the unfortunate associations that sprung to mind). 

After a minute or two of silence it became obvious that Rick was apparently done with the conversation, content to shift and scowl at his bottle. Jerry stood uncertainly, at a bit of a loss but figuring he had said his piece and while Rick was still his least favorite person it had nevertheless felt satisfying to say it all to him. He turned to the door and was just debating whether to attempt a “bye” of some sort or just leave when Rick cleared his throat. 

When Jerry flinched nervously as he turned back around, Rick apparently couldn't resist giving him a look of derision, but otherwise let it slide. 

“You know Jerry, you're a- you're a modicum less annoying when you're intoxicated. Want- euuurp- want my advice? Go get stoned with the kid. Pro tip- he’s been on this- this stupid blunt-rolling kick, thinks he's some Grandmaster prodigy at it.” 

There was a pang of melancholy at the display of casual knowledge about his son, a pang of nausea at the way Rick’s whole face literally lit up at the first positive discussion of Morty. But stronger than both of those was abject gratitude, surely shameful and yet another sign of how terrible Jerry was but to hell with it. He had no one left to answer to but Morty, anyway. 

“Thanks.”

Rick shuddered like his thanks were noxious and flapped his hands to shoo Jerry out of the room. 

 

A week later Jerry was quietly opening his son’s bedroom door. When he had tried this the previous night he had found the room empty, and he had turned around and spent the rest of that sleepless night/morning watching TV in the living room on mute, doggedly not thinking about where Morty likely was. 

But tonight when he peeped his head in he was gladdened to see his son not only there, but awake. (He shouldn't be glad his son wasn't asleep, of course, but right now he was and there were worse things to be glad about, anyway). He was sitting on his bed, lamp on, thumbing through a magazine that must not be porn simply because he didn't stash it when Jerry opened the door. 

“Hey, ah, Morty?”

“Jerry? Wh-what's going on?”

He looked confused and concerned and Jerry stumbled over his words in his nervous haste. 

“Oh, nothing! Nothing- I mean, nothing important, I just- I, um…”

Morty was staring at him like he had gone insane. Jerry noted he still wore pajama sets with matching tops and bottoms, like he had since he was a preschooler, proudly graduated from one-piece footed “baby jammies”. He ran his hand through his hair and tried to smile normally. 

“I, uh, I was trying out something new. I mean, well, technically something old but it's been a long time since I tried it and I-”

Morty was looking increasingly alarmed, and Jerry forced himself to just do it. 

“I bought all this weed,” he blurted out probably too loudly, holding up the baggie full of incriminating green nuggets that had been a surprising pain in the ass to get ahold of, requiring several embarrassing phone calls. “And- and I don't know how to smoke it. I mean- I know _how_ , but I don't have a pipe and all I have are these.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out two cheap gas station cigars. “Which I don't know how to use.”

Morty’s mouth fell open. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. 

“A- are you asking me to roll you a blunt?” 

“Well… yes, I mean… yes. Actually, I- I thought maybe you could roll one and show me how to roll the other?” Jerry hoped he didn't sound too hopeful. “I'll share it, of course. You can, you know, smoke some with me.”

Morty raised an eyebrow at him. Tension stretched across the room as Jerry waited.

Then, Morty started laughing. The hope soared inside Jerry, bright, stupid, unstoppable. 

“Holy shit, what the- what the _hell?_ Is this some, like, midlife crisis shit? W-What about Mom? She won't smoke with you?”

The words were mocking but there was a grin stretching across Morty’s face so Jerry shrugged and said merrily, “Eh, Beth never liked it. Gave her headaches.”

“Oh my god, Dad,” Morty said exasperatedly. Jerry beamed. “Well, alright then,” he added, a new light going on behind his eyes. “Let’s- let a pro show you how it's done. So what kinda shit is this anyway, ‘cuz there's a huge difference...”

As he began chattering on, walking over to his desk, he waved at Jerry to get inside the room and close the door behind him. 

Jerry took a moment to assure his sleep-deprived self that he was awake, then went to join his son.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Not too bad, right? Tried to give you all a bit of a breather on the bleak melancholy stuff I've been putting out. 
> 
> Reviews/comments/boos always appreciated!


End file.
